Overview 2-5, on LS§4 'The principles of conservation'1. What are the three principles that Epicurus and Lucretius argue about in these passages? (i) Things do not arise from what is not, from nothing. (ii) Things do not pass into nothingness; things are not literally annihilated. (iii) The totality of things was and will forever be as it is now; this totality does not change, and there is nothing external to which things can be introduced to change it. It is evident that things do not arise from just anything; each is born from particular things: fruit from the tree, tree from the seed, seed from the fruit; bird from the egg, egg from the bird. It cannot be, therefore, that things come from nothing, from what is not, because if that were the case, things could come from anything. I am not convinced: yes, it is evident that things are continually born from particular things; therefore, we could well argue that these things do not arise from nothing. But is it clear that in this all things are similar? Perhaps some things arise from nothing: this possibility still haunts physicists today. The Epicureans suppose it necessary that particular conditions of generation correspond to particular kinds of things, and that all things of every kind are alike in this: a supposition not ridiculous, but certainly not self-evident. This, I would add, is not an “implicit appeal to the principle of sufficient reason,” since this would involve questions about what function corresponds to the conditions of generation: what function does the egg have if not the generation of a bird? We might answer that eggs are a function of animal nutrition…middle of paper…permanent attributes of bodies. A fixed attribute is one that cannot at any time be separated and removed without resulting in fatal destruction. - as weight is to stones, heat to fire, liquidity to water, tangibility to all bodies and intangibility to void." "On the contrary, slavery, poverty, wealth, freedom, war, peace and all other things whose arrival and departure the nature of things survives intact, these we are accustomed to call, very properly, accidents." These are Lucretius' brief definitions of permanent attributes and accidents. Epicurus obviously says the same thing, but adds some points of interest. First, we should not describe permanent attributes as self-existent, as non-existent, nor as “incorporeal things accumulating in the body.” He includes among the permanent attributes «shapes, colors, sizes, weights and other things»....’